


How Far We'll Be

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Plata Quemada | Burnt Money (2000)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Internalized Homophobia, Light BDSM, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 17:09:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8925379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: There was always a lot of blood in Ángel’s dreams.
These days, it’s Montevideo and a rain of bullets.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlehuntress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlehuntress/gifts).



> I have put whatever I thought was problematic into the tags, but anyone who has seen the movie pretty much knows what to expect here. This is intended to be a Fix-it to movie canon, however, so I hope it brings you Yuletide cheer <3

His name is Ángel and he talks to the angels. Or it was, before they had shed their identities to come to the great melting pot that is New York City. His name might be different, but the angels, well… the angels are still there. Nene stubs his cigarette out in a large crystal ashtray on the windowsill and waits. Any moment now, Ángel is going to wake up and scream.

***

It took two days for Losardo to get them the new passports. Another day to take the boat to Rio. In another week they were in Columbia. Then Mexico. Then, in the blink of an eye, it seemed, San Diego. Nene had wanted to stay in California, but no. Ángel insisted they keep going to New York City. Nothing else would do.

Nene doesn’t think Ángel took the weather into account, for one thing. The winters are far too cold, and the summers are bone-meltingly hot. And the beef tastes like chicken, which is the oddest thing. But Ángel is happy here, in a way he never was in Buenos Aires. Malos Aires, he had called it. He used to speak of standing before the Casa Rosada and watching the fountain run red with blood. There was always a lot of blood in Ángel’s dreams.

These days, it’s Montevideo and a rain of bullets.

When did Ángel slip through his fingers, Nene wonders as he walks down the busy street. The warm, welcoming scents of a local bakery wrap around him with enticing fingers. Down the alley where the local prostitutes all congregate beneath the pall of their cheap perfume. Stairwells that reek of piss and eau de cologne. This part isn’t so different from Argentina. Possibly more Jews. Definitely more bagels. And fags like them, or whatever it is that Nene is, he doesn’t think about it too much. Not anymore.

Out of “chaos, destruction, and death,” Nene had wanted to be Chaos. El Cuervo, who somehow managed to make it out of Brazil with them only to die of a sedative overdose in Mexico, it follows then would be Death. Which left Ángel to play the part of Destruction. He took to that name with the fervor of a religious calling, as if the voices had told him. Come to think of it, the voices did.

“Don’t push me away,” Nene had pleaded. “You’re all I have in this world. I would die for you.”

That must have been around the time that the nightmares had started. Black, belated, boisterous nightmares, of money burned and desires immolated on an altar of some cruel god. Ángel wants Nene to hurt him because the pain quiets the voices. But Nene would rather chase these dream demons away with soft words and softer caresses. 

“I would do anything for you. Anything.”

For now, they have enough money to live quietly in the small apartment in Queens without having to worry about where their next score is coming from. Ángel has taken up painting and Nene is seriously considering becoming a car salesman. El Cuervo would have probably approved.

“You must try harder to learn English,” Ángel insists, and all Nene can do is stare at his lower lip and trace it with the pad of his thumb.

“Mouth,” he says, his tongue awkward and heavy around the foreign word. So much uglier than its Spanish equivalent, _la boca_. Many things are uglier in English. But not Ángel. He is still unchanged, still beautiful.

***

Ángel wakes up with a scream and Nene is there to wrap his arms around him and catch him as he surfaces from the black waters of his mares.

“Hush, love, I’m here. I’m here,” he whispers, lips pressed against Ángel’s temple. “You’re safe now. You’re safe.”

Ángel’s eyes are liquid pools of sunlight as he looks up, blinding with their beauty, yet impossible to look away. Do angels in heaven look like this? And if so, why must they address you by saying “Have no fear”? Nene may have found an answer to his own question: he is terrified. Terrified of losing Ángel: to himself, to the voices, to his own exceptional ability to embrace sinning and to fuck everything up. 

“How did God make you so perfect, my angel?” he asks as a shiver runs through his lover’s limbs and Ángel reaches up to press their lips together.

“Where are we?” Ángel asks, as Nene wipes drops of perspiration off his brow.

“Still New York, my love.” Nene waits a moment before asking, “And you? Where were you just now?”

“Back there,” Ángel responds, hand reaching up to caress the curve of Nene’s neck, thumb pressed against his Adam’s apple, possessively. “Montevideo. With the burnt money.” Nene is silent. It is easier now, to sit there, holding Ángel in his arms, letting his fingers comb through the thick, chocolate tresses that have gotten a little too long since their last trip to the barbershop. “You died again.”

“I’m sorry, love,” Nene responds and presses a kiss to each eyelid in turn.

“There was a woman this time. Giselle.”

“Like the ballet we went to see last week?” Nene snickers and entwines his fingers with Ángel’s, pressing their hands together.

“You fucked her,” Ángel frowns.

“I doubt it. Too skinny.”

“Not the ballerina, you idiot!”

“You don’t know what my girlfriend looks like,” Nene protests and leans down to kiss Ángel’s lips. Those beautiful lips that no god or demon can keep him away from. 

“Every night,” Ángel says, “I feel as if I get to relive it, until we get it right.”

“We did get it right,” Nene reminds him. “And every morning, you wake up here, in my arms. Where you belong.”

***

There is God in Church, and then there is the God that Nene worships on his knees, and they are not the same god. 

“I would do anything for you,” Nene repeats, pressing his lips to the backs of Ángel’s thighs.

“You have,” his lover says. There are moments, days even, like that one, when Ángel is entirely lucid. 

Pain makes the voices stay quiet. They discovered that together, when Ángel took that bullet in Buenos Aires, and Nene patched him up. And this, this is the pain of their own choosing. They get to call it whatever they wish. _I wish._ I wish to call it _Love_.

Nene adjusts the restraints around Ángel’s ankles and gets up. They are back to chest, and in another moment, sharing breath, as Nene pulls Ángel’s head back by his hair, craning his neck so their lips barely touch.

“Are you ready?” Nene asks, before Ángel nods his assent, and then brings his belt down against Ángel’s exposed ass. 

When he’s done doing this, he is going to get his reward: he’s going to get to fuck Ángel within an inch of unconsciousness. He’s going to fuck him until every last demon has been banished by his cock. He’s gonna fuck him until Ángel’s dreams are safe, until they are no longer a neighborhood he cannot walk into alone and unarmed. No more rain of bullets. No more burnt money. No more _Giselles_.

“ _God_ ,” Nene moans into the nape of Ángel’s neck. “I have to but touch you and immediately I get so hard.”

“I heard you say something much like that before, in a dream.”

“Well, this isn’t a dream.”

“If it is, it is a much more pleasant one.” Ángel’s head lies back against Nene’s shoulder and his lips trace the outline of Nene’s jaw.

“How do you say _pesadilla_ in English?” Nene mutters, fingers still clenched tightly around Ángel’s cock as it twitches in the final throes of orgasm.

“Nightmare,” Ángel replies.

“Nightmare,” Nene repeats, pensively, his teeth and lips still worrying the skin of his lover’s neck. Salty-sweet and moist with their mingled perspiration. “English isn’t a very beautiful language,” he mutters into that beloved, warm skin.

“You just don’t try enough to see the poetry in it,” Ángel laughs and closes his eyes, relaxing into Nene’s embrace.

“And you do?”

“It’s new. It gives new life. It’s a chance to get it right again.”

“As long as I’m with you in the end,” Nene admits sleepily and presses a kiss against the top of Ángel’s vertebrae, “then I got it right.”

***

Sunlight streams in through the windows. Down in the streets, the hustle and bustle of New York begins to pick up the din, people and vehicles move in an endless anthill up and down the avenues. A melting pot. A good place to start over, if you can outrun your demons.

Nene places another cigarette in between his lips. Only before he has a chance to light it, Ángel’s arm coils around him, slick and serpentine, and his long fingers pull the filter from his mouth, before crushing the tobacco into pulp. His fingers no longer smell of gunpowder and blood, but they still smell of sex. They smell of coffee and paint. They smell of a future undeserved, ripped from the maws of Chaos, Destruction and Death itself.

“No nightmares?” Nene asks, turning to face his lover.

“Not this time.”

“Good,” Nene says. In English.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide everyone! Remember, comments feed writers.


End file.
